Diplo Launches Non-Profit

Diplo loves the kids. When the DJ and Mad Decent label founder isn’t flying from gig to gig, or signing acts like Bonde Do Role to his roster, he's doing things like starting Heaps Decent, a new non-profit dedicated to giving underprivileged Australian kids access to music education.

A recent trip through the land down under left Diplo amazed at the different hip-hop projects emerging from some of Australia’s more remote regions, and with the help of partners Andrew Levins and Nina Agzarian, he developed a studio filled with equipment, meant to educate the indigenous kids of these areas. According to the man himself, “This project is way to give back in larger ways and to be proactive, and the new, faster forms of multimedia and communication are working in our favor to even the field. I feel like any artist with any level of success can find it easy to take some time out and give back to an initiative such as Heaps Decent.”

The project will teach technical as well as public performance skills, and Diplo has plans to see Heaps Decent reach other parts of the globe as well. The next studio is slated to open sometime in 2008, in the Rocinha favela in Rio de Janeiro.